Elaine Storkey's Thought For The Day - 17th January 2001

Babies

Good morning,

The story of that contest for adoption has touched deeply into our public concern. It's more than a transatlantic tug of war, and raises enormous issues. As all the commentators have pointed out, the need for proper regulation of adoption, where full interviews are conducted, histories monitored, children matched with prospective parents and all the checks and balances in place, is vital. For in a society where adults have all the power, the interests of children have to be safeguarded to the utter limit.

Babies' needs are intense. They depend on the fundamental self-giving of parents for food, warmth, touch, understanding, protection, care. They are distinct persons. Their minds and bodies are formed with great intellectual strides each day; learning to identify the smile of an adult, the corner of a room, the sudden freshness of a breeze. Parental love provides the shape to their existence and well-being, and allows them to respond in security and trust.

Empathising with the child is thus basic to the structure of parenting, for the relationship requires commitment to unselfish care. God delegates to parents the task of bringing up the children God loves into maturity. A civilised society is one where this relationship is respected and legally protected, and where children are honoured.

And that is why this case is so crucial. For it raises for society all the questions about the integrity and meaning of children. And it seems that here two vital protective barriers have already been breached.

First, the overriding concern for the needs of the child. For what strongly appears to have been the focus up to now has been the needs of the adults. As the self-denial required of parenting has been replaced by the determined fulfilment of adult wants, the children have become need-meeters, unwitting comfort-blankets to two sets of competing couples who both want to love and provide for them. But this is a distortion of who they are. For however great the pain of adult need, children do not, and must not, exist basically to plug the gap in other people's emotional lives.
Second is that issue of money. When the acquisition of babies is tied up with economics and market forces it bites into the very meaning of human value. For there is a thin line dividing payment for services and payment for goods. And when everything gets a price tag and is open to economic competition, and the highest bidder, there is nothing, not even children, who can escape becoming commodities on the open market.

From a Christian perspective, the meaning of children lies in their identity and ultimate worth as given by God, not in their usefulness to others, whether that use is emotional or economic. God's value on babies is beyond sentiment or price, and ours should be too.

Elaine Storkey